The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,286

sister in that convent felt that Stella was her special little friend. She led you to believe that. She told you little secrets about herself, just as if she’d never told them to another soul. And she knew all about you, she did. She knew things you’d never told anyone, and she’d talk to you about your secrets and your fears and the things you always wanted to tell someone, and she’d make you feel better about it. And later, hours later, or maybe even days later, you’d think about it, think about what it had been like to be sitting there in the garden whispering with her, and you’d know she was a witch! She was from the devil. And she was up to no good.

“But she wasn’t mean, I’ll say this much for her. She wasn’t mean. If she had been, she’d have been a monster, that one. God knows the evil she might have done. I don’t think she really wanted to make trouble. But she took a secret pleasure in her powers, if you know what I mean. She liked knowing your secrets. She liked seeing the look of amazement when she told you what you dreamed the night before.

“And oh, how she pitched herself into things. She would draw pictures all day long for weeks on end, then throw out the pencils and never draw another thing. Then it was embroidery with her, she had to learn it, and she’d make the most beautiful thing, fussing at herself for the least little mistake, then throw down the needles and be done with that forevermore. I never saw a child so changeable. It was as though she was looking for something, something to which she could give herself, and she never found it. Least ways not while she was a little girl.

“I’ll tell you one thing she loved to do, and she never tired of it, and that was to tell stories to the other girls. They’d gather around her at big recess, and she’d keep them hanging on her every word until the bell rang. And such stories they were that she told them—ghost stories of old plantation houses full of horrible secrets, and people foully murdered, and of voodoo in the islands long years ago. She knew stories of pirates, oh, they were the worst, the things she would tell about the pirates. It was positively shocking. And all this had the ring of truth to it, to hear her tell it. But you knew she had to be making it up. What did she know of the thoughts and feelings of some group of poor souls on a captured galleon in the hours before a brute of a pirate made them walk the plank?

“But I’ll tell you, some of the things she said were most interesting, and I always wanted to ask someone else about them, you know, someone who read the history books and really knew.

“But the girls had nightmares from the things she told them and wouldn’t you know it, the parents were coming and asking us, ‘Now, Sister, where did my little girl ever hear such a thing!’

“We were always calling Miss Mary Beth. ‘Keep her home for a few days,’ we’d ask. For that was the thing about Stella. You couldn’t take it day in and day out. Nobody could take it.

“And thank the Lord she’d get tired of school and disappear on her own for months at a time.

“Sometimes it went on so long we thought she was never coming back. We heard she was running wild over there on First and Chestnut, playing with the servants’ children and making a voodoo altar with the cook’s son, him black as coal, you can be sure of it, and we’d think, well, somebody ought to go round and talk to Miss Mary Beth about it.

“Then lo and behold, one morning, perhaps ten o’clock it would be—the child never did care what time she came to school—the limousine would appear on the corner of Constance and Saint Andrew and out would step Stella in her little uniform, a perfect doll, if you can imagine, but with a great big ribbon in her hair. And what would she have with her, but a sack of gaily wrapped presents for each of the sisters she knew by name, and hugs for all of us, too, you can be sure of it. ‘Sister Bridget Marie,’ she’d whisper in my ear, ‘I missed you.’